>Lets say a lobbyist for a nonprofit cancer research group has dinner with a representative and lobbies him to vote for increased cancer research at this dinner

>Lets say a lobbyist for a nonprofit cancer research group has dinner with a representative and lobbies him to vote for increased cancer research at this dinner. Is this bribery? most people would tend to agree that if it required something it was at the very least an exchange, perhaps a bribe. one could ask why the request for support couldn't be done over the phone; the answer is "because of the dinner." -- well, then, isn't the dinner being exchanged for the support? what is the value of the dinner? Does the value represent a monetary amount that would throw red flags up regarding the dinner being an exchange of value rather than a living expense? Does this exchange of value represent a bribe? It's not as cut and dry as "A is lobbying and B is bribing.", that's why most political corruption scandals are generally handled by committees of people that try to go through the events to extract meaning from them.